


Retreat from the Pole

by El Staplador (elstaplador)



Category: Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
Genre: Community: 52fandoms, Ficlet, Gen, School, Writing, gen - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-02
Updated: 2013-11-02
Packaged: 2017-12-31 06:42:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1028510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elstaplador/pseuds/El%20Staplador
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even Arctic explorers have to go back to school.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Retreat from the Pole

'Welcome back. You've a lot to catch up on, of course...'

Dorothea felt as important as if she had been ill herself. All the girls turned around to look at her and she felt herself turning pink as she marched to the only empty desk, right at the front of the room. She thought of an _auto da fe_... _The innocent man felt the heat of the flames as he approached the pyre_ , she murmured to herself, _but it was nothing to the heat of his anger..._

'Don't stare, girls,' Miss Bruce said. 'You've all seen Dorothea before. Now, Pitt the Younger...'

Her desk, or what had been her desk last term, was occupied by a girl she did not recognise. Violet, her best friend at school, wrinkled her nose apologetically as she passed. Dorothea, looking as dignified as she could manage, sat down and opened her exercise book to the very middle. She would remove this page later.

She wrote, _Fire and Vengeance, a novel by Dorothea Callum_. 'The heat of his anger...' But would 'the cold fury of his shame' be better? Cold... icy... She would much rather have been drinking tea with the explorers in the igloo – but then they were all back at school, even Captain Nancy. Perhaps, she thought, there would be scope in _Fire and Vengeance_ for a desperate pursuit across a snowy pass, in the mountains of Spain. Or plague. _The Yellow Flag..._

Someone was kicking gently at the leg of her chair. She looked up, cautiously. Miss Bruce was squeaking away at the blackboard, and Violet was passing a note forwards. Dorothea took it and unfolded it under the desk.

_We missed you, lucky beast! New girl is Sally McFadden. I have told her all about Cathcart. Hope you have written lots more about him._

Cathcart! Dorothea had forgotten about Cathcart, the Cavalier hero of the story that had kept her classmates fascinated from bedtime to lights out every night until the Christmas holidays. She had left him imprisoned in a lonely tower that looked out over the Adriatic Sea.

She smiled. After all, _Fire and Vengeance_ could wait. So could _The Yellow Flag_. So, for that matter, could Pitt the Younger. She turned the page, and wrote, _A low murmur woke Cathcart from his uneasy sleep. “Come, come at once. We have only a few minutes.” He sprang to his feet. Dazzled by the light, he could not make out his benefactor's face. “Here,” the unknown helper continued, “put these warm clothes on. We must go north, to the mountains, and it will be a hard, cold road.”_


End file.
